MILLVILLE – An accounting firm may begin sifting paperwork later this month to determine whether there are longstanding, systemic problems in construction and housing offices that are costing both the city and property owners’ time and money.

The company, at a cost of up to $69,000, will examine three areas: A loan program to homeowners; the use of tax liens to recover municipal maintenance costs; and collection of registration fees from owners of foreclosed upon properties. The three areas all fall under parts of the Department of Public Affairs.

The City Commission unanimously approved hiring the company at its Nov. 2 meeting. The request was from Commissioner Lynne Porreca-Compari, who has overseen Public Affairs since taking office in 2014.

The commissioner said Millville has been lending money to homeowners but not enforcing provisions that the owner must remain in the home for a period of years or pay back the loan. Some loans also were issued without including that requirement, she said.

The city, she said, also mishandled filing tax liens against properties to recover its costs for maintaining nuisance properties and as a result could not recover money. Some contractors were paid for work that wasn’t done, she added.

However, Porreca-Compari said, the most serious problem is a failure to fully enforce a foreclosed property registration rule. She said the city at present has more than 800 foreclosed properties and under city ordinance should be collecting $250 to $500 on each annually.

“The city should be collecting between $200,000 to $400,000 per year,” she said. “This year the city collected only $100,000 because the Department of Public Affairs did not do its job.

She called out by name her predecessor Dale Finch, who lost his re-election bid two years ago, and current Vice Mayor James Quinn for allegedly being aware there was a problem and not addressing it. Bi-weekly staff meeting minutes record the issue under discussion with both Finch and Quinn present.

“The problem was not corrected and the city has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she continued. “This is money that the city desperately needs that has never been collected. Since the staff can’t seem to do it, I have personally been working weekends and evenings to send the registrations out in order to try to collect some of this money.”

Asked about the allegations, Finch this week said he met regularly with department staff in his tenure to review their work.

“And people were doing their jobs because their feet were held to the fire,” Finch said. “It’s that simple. Some of the things that were said, I find it hard to believe that — trust me, I was very diligent in ensuring that people were doing their jobs.”

Finch disputed Porreca-Compari’s estimates on revenues from foreclosure registration fees as “absolutely inaccurate.” He noted the commission had established a fee of $100 per property per year while he was on the governing body in 2011 and was collecting $25,000 to $30,000 a year.

“If they weren’t collected, you know, it wasn’t my responsibility as the city commissioner to sit there and baby-sit the collection of fees,” Finch said. “My job was to make sure they were doing their job, and the fees were the fees. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I think she might be — I have no clue what she’s trying to get to.”

The city adopted a registration fee for foreclosed properties in July 2011 as part of a broader rewrite of its housing regulations to crack down on “nuisance” properties and landlords. The city was able to address foreclosed properties at the time because of a new state law addressing the issue.

The city wanted leverage to force better maintenance of properties and to extract money from properties considered to be a drain on municipal services, including excessive numbers of calls to police.

In November 2014, the current City Commission adopted changes to the ordinance. The annual registration fee for foreclosed properties was increased to $250 for the first year of foreclosure and then $500 per year until the property was out of foreclosure.

Porreca-Compari said regular audits in the department did not detect the problems. City attorneys and an auditor recommended a forensic accounting investigation when she told them she believed there were multiple problems, she said.

“If something doesn’t make sense to me, I look closer,” she said. “When I was looking at the liens, when I was looking at the foreclosures, it didn’t make sense to me.”